America’s pastime has been enjoyed by people of all ages for many, many years, but how much have you thought about baseball from a retirement planning perspective? Today we’ll explore the parallels between being successful in sport and finances.

Baseball is a game of numbers, strategy and patience. That’s what makes it so great in the eyes of many people and part of the reason why it became America’s pastime.

That’s also why it has a number of similarities to retirement planning. As we move into the summer and enjoy another baseball season, we wanted to dive into these parallels on the podcast and put a different spin on the planning conversation.

To start, think about the different types of baseball fans. Some people take a passive approach while others love to immerse their self into the numbers. It’s very similar to the people we work with in the financial world. You watch from a distance and just keep an eye on the high level information like scores and standings or you could really dive into the statistics and data and get highly involved in the day-to-day.

When you think about baseball, home runs are usually one the first things that come to mind. The best power hitters of all-time were also commonly known for their propensity to strikeout. Swinging for the fences can carry the highest reward but it also brings the biggest risk. That sounds pretty familiar with investing as well, right?

As for strategy, there’s been a movement over the past decade or two in baseball to focus more on data. You might have seen the movie Moneyball, which starred Brad Pitts and showed how the Oakland A’s made that shift in approach to much success. Financial planning is all about doing the math and making the numbers fit the goals, and that’s exactly what we do with clients every day.

If you’ve ever worked with us before, you probably know that we have a scorecard that gets prepared for each client. That’s a parallel to baseball that you might not find everywhere, but we try to present a plan in a very straightforward fashion. We want it to be easy to identify progress and results much like you’d find on a scorecard at a baseball game.

This episode will dive into all of this in more detail so check out the show and get a better idea of why baseball and retirement planning are so much alike.

Listen to the entire episode or click on the timestamps below to skip ahead to a particular financial opinion.

1:40 – Home runs

4:35 – Data and analytics

7:19 – Five-tool players